“Knowing Jesus isn’t just about when things go good. He helps you know you’re not alone when it hits the fan.”
“I’ve never heard that phrase, ‘hit the fan.’ What does that mean?”
“You’ve never heard someone say, when the **** hits the fan?”
“Oh yeah, for sure. That’s my life right now. Just never heard that phrase without the word ****. And yeah, I need this stuff to be true. My life is a mess.”
Sometimes my worlds converge in the most awesome way.
ParentMinistry.net is a project I started working on about a year ago for Jeremy Lee. Basically, Jeremy’s site helps your church staff better minister to parents of teenagers by providing the easy-to-use, timely, and just plain awesome content.
Well, February 26th Jeremy has booked my very own partner-in-crime, Marko, as the speaker for his next free monthly webinar.
It’s kind of like an episode of Love Connection. Two folks whom I love working with, coming together for an hour of discussion about the minds of teenagers. The best part? It’s totally free!
So do yourself a favor.
Sometimes you come across statements about teenagers that are just so over-the-top that you have to laugh.
Today the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced that the teen birth rate is at an all-time low. (More on that in a minute.) But in the press release there’s this hilarious statement from Dr. Jill Rabin, a OB/GYN from Hyde Park, NY:
“It’s important to remember the three I’s when you’re working with teens. They think they’re immortal, invincible and infertile. We have to convince them otherwise and dispel the myths, and the message needs repetition.”
Ah, generalizations. Aren’t they fun?
In February 2006, John Piper wrote a post called “Don’t Waste Your Cancer.” While I’ve never had cancer I resonated with his trying to make sense out of something which must have seemed to not make sense to him.
If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not, he has a purpose.
Since God has sovereignty over the molecular things in our bodies we can agree that God also has sovereignty over bigger things, like macroeconomics.
Morgan Schmidt teaching at Open Boston
Oh yeah, Open is really cool.
It’s crazy. Life comes at you a million miles per hour sometimes. With the holidays and my trip to Africa I didn’t have a lot of mental space to get excited for Open Boston. It was one of those things where I was pumped about it in a cognitive and strategic kind of way. But it wasn’t until Friday evening that the emotions of its awesomeness really started to hit me.
Here’s Five Emotional Polaroid’s I Took at Open Boston.
Here’s 5 ideas that are outside of the norm for youth group. (Nothing wrong with traditional youth group, just sharing ideas.) My hope is that these ideas will spark you to create programs that your community actually needs as opposed to building your ministry purely on a combination of felt need & what you experienced as a teenager.
Let’s hang some meat on yesterday’s post, Making Youth Ministry More Programmatic, Again.
Before you start going through old clip art files and reprinting Run the Bases to post on the wall in your youth room, let’s get a quick rundown of things that’ll get you going the right direction. (That’s a Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry reference for readers under 30.)
